Are younger generations more regressive?

[bryceQ]

I'm in my mid 30s, my brother is in his early 20s. He believes in gender ideology, TWAW... But also agrees there are sex differences in sport 🤷‍♀️. Knows I've faced a lot of street harassment by men which makes me feel unsafe... Knows our mum faced domestic violence. I think his opinion is quite confused, but also think his opinions in general lack maturity which is normal at his age.

Anyway.... Today he was saying that his girlfriend has decorated her room in very "girly colours" - and apparently gen z call this "girly core". I found it really irritating that this generation seem to cling to gender stereotypes in a way that seems so regressive. It feels like we are going the opposite way. I find it so perplexing, for all the obsession with what you identify as...., all of the identifications seem to be rooted in outdated stereotypes. Girls like pink 🙄

I know this is just a silly anecdote, but I wondered those of you with grown-up children or younger siblings, have you noticed this too?

To my mind, everyone has to be put in a box today. It's like the whole Generation stuff. When I was younger I don't think we knew or cared what Generation people were. Now it feels like it has to define you. Bizarre.

Maybe it's down to social media. It feels like people need to identify themselves as tropes rather than as individuals who happen to have certain interests or likes. Got to be labelled. It's very limiting and pointless.

DadJoke Younger people are more likely to support minority rights, just as they did when gay people were more vilified and oppressed. There are always exceptions, of course, but time usually deals with the problem.

You're assuming that progress takes place from generation to generation in a positive, liberalising direction, with the younger generation invariably supporting the more vilified and oppressed.

I don't think history bears this out - I'm thinking of fascist youth groups in the 30s and the Red Guards in the 60s. And gay- and lesbian-bashing was usually carried out by young people - in my case the two worst attacks were by groups of young men in their teens.

Sure, younger generations take up causes, but that can be to the exclusion and detriment of others.
For example, pro-trans young people will go to almost any length - demonstrations, slogans, tins of soup, fists, iron bars, explosive devices - to support transgender rights.

In so doing the will go to almost any length - demonstrations, slogans, tins of soup, fists, iron bars, explosive devices - to attack women's rights.

So that's just a case of stepping on one group to support another, which isn't social progress in a broad sense. It's more fads and fashion than social justice.

The idea that demographics will ''weed out" anything that is not espoused by today's younger generations sounds like a recipe for a scary dystopian future, but I think that social movements tend to be more cyclical than wavey, and already the wave of trans extremism has begun to ebb.

It will probably be replaced with something that includes the upcycling of some of the social justice ideals and values that the older demographic, including us rights-hoarding dinosaurs, have been defending all this time.

Good health, happiness and a long life to you too!

The younger people I know are definitely feeling more constrained by what used to be called "sterotypes" but now, it seems to be known as "identity".
I think the idea is that what used to be fought against (stereotypes) in my youth (80's teenager, gender benders, men with more makeup than me, non conforming clothing choice as a rebellion against the suits and ties of our parents) is now something that is fought FOR. Identity (stereotypes) is now sacred.
It's a puzzling turnaround, I have to admit.

I remember seeing the local paper in the late 90s and seeing the annual "school group photo" of all the kids going up to secondary, and it occuring to me that every girl, almost without exception, had long, centre parted hair. Where were the short haired girls?

I'm guessing at least some of those identikit "Rachel From Friends" lassies are now parents of teenagers themselves and may well be strengthening the "girls look like this, boys look like that" to their own kids without even realising it's happening. Something very odd happened whilst I wasn't paying attention. I've no idea what.

Nah that makes you the opposite of regressive imo. Believing in innate gender would make you regressive.

It's time that we had a movement celebrating natural, healthy bodies (and I say that as someone with a serious disability who has had reconstructive surgery).

Having a healthy, working body is the greatest gift anyone can have in this life. Young people (as a group) need to learn to look after theirs and to not needlessly modify themselves when the risks are so damaging. You have one body and it's the only one you get for your entire life.

i don’t know if they’re regressive but what’s wrong with pink? I would have thought it very old school (not in a good way) to think pink is any “lesser” than any other colour just because it’s perceived as girly. I am sometimes inclined to “power dressing” for conferences etc and my next dress I think will be pink - I see it as a bit of a statement that you can dress in traditionally “feminine” colours and still be powerful. Bit off topic I know!

I think things go in cycles (notwithstanding the current rise in extreme misogyny).

My parents raised me without any real belief that there were gendered activities - I knew that football was largely seen as a man's sport, for example, but my mum, grandmother etc were far more keen on attending matches etc then their male partners, I played football at school, etc.

Whereas my grandparents on the other side were firmly of the notion that "women are people who are like this, and men are like that" and that was simply nature's way - like today's fashionable view.

That generation did however think there was a difference between men and women. I can't work out if people who believe someone's feelings about their identity dictates their sex think there is a difference, or not. It would seem so, because of the emphasis placed on changing from one to the other, yet I've never seen an example given of any way in which woman-gender differs from man-gender.

Mine are teen Gen Z -I do think they like labels more.

They've also had "odd" messaging coming from Schools and wider society and peers. I think there may have been less time in their education for critical thinking and wider areas of study - and yes wider social history.

There's loss of nuance in debates going on in society - polarisation - and world is awash in alternative facts. We watches a program last night that was repeating a big USA companies PR about first to do a tech item which isn't true and we know because it's in our living memory but is rapidly becoming accepted fact. Trusted sources are harder to find and who to believe in situations in media can be difficult to work out.

Basically there a lot of noise - perhaps retreating to labels and even stereo types is helpful in some way to counter that.

I will say though DD2 year is starting to have more range of girl hair cuts than DD1 time 4 school years ahead when it was all long as possible hair.

Pink was actually originally a "manly" colour, I believe. I have no idea why I know that, but it's something I've picked up in my reading somewhere.
It's ridiculous isn't it, that a bloody colour can be off-limits to some, or prescribed to others. It's just a colour - diluted red. Pink is apparently the "lbd" colour of India, for both sexes.
What a weird species we are.

This puts me in mind of something that happens about two years ago. My older children's school - they were about 17 and 14 - put a new mask mandate in place, this was some time after the original one had been lifted. The kids were all quite upset about it.

I suggested they get kids together and have some kind of school protest. My dd's answer, "no, we can't do that, people will think we are anti-vaxxers."

Now, I was not giving them any kind of rhetoric against people who didn't want to be vaccinated, this was coming from their school environment in some way.

It just seemed so conformist to me. They were scared to be identified with a group that wasn't really even part of the issue they were concerned with.

I don't think being non-conformist really comes naturally to teens at all.

But when I came out in the late 90s, the acronym was still LGB, queer was a term of homophobic abuse. If someone said that masculine-looking lesbians were actually men, or that there was such a thing as a male lesbian, that would all be viewed as homophobic bollocks.

Back then there were lesbian bars, bookshops, quiz nights, discussion groups, social groups of all kinds and it was understood and accepted that they were single sex.

If I remember rightly, the 90s was also a time when lots of gay women objected to being called 'lesbians' because ... wait for it... they 'didn't like labels'!!

There are not enough eyerolls in the universe to express the irony of comparing that with the LGBQT2SIA+++ labels around today!

This is not responsive to the OP. The question was not about minority rights. The question was about gender stereotyping eg; "girlycore." Is gender stereotyping regressive or not?

It's just that it's gender stereotyping to consider pink "girly." There's nothing wrong with pink. I love pink, but anybody who tries to tell me I love it because it's "girly" is going to get properly told off.
I dress like a dude much of the time, only in nicer colours than the usual drab ones men wear. I love purple as well.
According to some people, this would mean I'm non-binary. 🙄

Yeah, gender ideology is conservative, but being sold as progressive.
Here in Canada the Conservative party used to paradoxically be called the Progressive Conservative party. They dropped the progressive part when they merged with a religious right party. It seems to me that Gen Zers are both progressive and conservative at the same time, only they label their conservatism around stereotyped gender expression as progressive, because it's being packaged that way to them in order to sell products. What astronomical profits cosmetic companies and clothing manufacturers must be making off the trans fad, not to mention entertainment. They even make toys now which are profiting from it. Check out trans Barbie;

https://creations.mattel.com/en-ca/products/barbie-tribute-collection-laverne-cox-doll-hcb99

There are also gender neutral dolls like Creatable World dolls.

I think that the concept people had then of trans was gay men, and they were included because they and everyone else knew they were gay men, and a couple including such a person was understood as a gay couple.

Let’s not forget that there are now more than one poll that shows that people up to age 28 are also not being open about their opinions with friends, colleagues, social groups and even family because they are afraid of being ostracised

So much so that I think that until there was this public push back, the court cases such as Forstater, Bailey and Pheonix and the highly publicised sports and prison issues, young people were not vocal about their opinions.

Since then we have have mass student protests about schools forcing gender neutral toilets in the UK. In the USA, we are seeing female school/college sports teams forfeit their games against male players. Internationally, we have seen the growing number of social media posts from young women who reject being told that they have to accept males as being ‘female’.

And we have seen the growth of the detransitioner voices.

I think it is blinkered to assume the position of young people is one where the majority support accepting male people as being female people for single sex spaces, sports and representation and other opportunities.

Plus there is no comparison between the fight for LGB equality and the additional rights demands of people who demand they are treated as the sex they are materially not. Yet despite there being no comparison, this comparison is attempted all the time
by those who seem to just repeat this trope.

What rights do trans people not have, @DadJoke?

Most people support women's rights to have single sex spaces and sports. If young people don't support that, it's not because they're more likely to support minority rights, it's because they've been gaslit into believing women aren't allowed to have boundaries.

I’m late 40s, this is not a 20 year old phenomenon. Loads of things were gendered coded in my childhood. Plus a society that still had deeply drawn lines about what ‘boys do and girls do’. I do think there is a regressive element in gender ideology. But overall, kids have had less overt gendered expectations growing up over the last 20 years. Note my use of overt. And yes, I’ve got kids the same age as yours of both sexes. I was fairly relaxed about gendered stuff and just made sure they could access what they wanted. My one massively into dolls and prams, never wears makeup and likes the baggy masc look now as an adult.

Same age as you. Sorry but women with short hair and trousers were sometimes soundly derided! See viz. And the expectations on girls were deeply set and we were expected to be kind (hate that too by the way). Women were only just going to uni in bigger numbers, less than 5% of parliament was female - until the late 1990s actually. Let’s not romanticise it! Gendered expectations were being massively challenged but that wasn’t the societal norm.

The rights transgender people have under the EA2010, and GRA and under the ECHR. You know, the ones you want to remove.

You mean the extra special rights they have in addition to all the same rights everyone else has, some of which infringe on the rights of other groups?

Ah.....those "rights"

I think what DadJoke may be saying is that as women are not a minority, their rights are not fashionable amongst the young. I'm not sure why he's so very obsessed with persuading women to have fewer rights than they used to, though. Why?

So the additional rights that organisations can then claim exceptions for and legitimately exclude those male people from being treated as if they are female people?

The additional rights that no other people in the UK have to be treated differently to their material sex?